2meirl4meirl

Mental health struggle veteran here, I feel the need to address each of these items as I have badges and achievements unlocked for each.

1. Binge Drinking: by far the worst on this list, every time you binge-drink you are not only damaging your brain and increasing your likelihood for medical problems, you need to understand that your brain has an "equilibrium" system, where every time you flood your brain with pleasure chemicals, it will try to "level it off" by flooding your brain with the opposite. It takes much longer to clear these "downer" chemicals than it takes to ingest pleasure chemicals. So every time you binge drink, you will have days or weeks of even worse depression and skyrocketing anxiety. As you binge-drink more, your liver will develop scars that make it work less efficiently, chemicals like ammonia can build up in your blood and make you disoriented, confused and unable to function normally. Alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs as it's easily available and can be lethal to withdraw from, as well lethal from long-term use. Alcohol is the second most lethal drug in the world. (Number one is smoking tobacco.)

2. Porn: A lot of people don't understand why porn is dangerous, particularly if they already have a relationship and say things like "It's not distorting my perception of healthy relationships, I'm already married!" and the like. The problem with porn is again, the over-adaptability of the brain. Orgasm is one of the best training tools your body has, it's a massive flood of pleasure chemicals so it will teach your brain how to interact with the world and how to receive pleasure - one danger of regular porn use, is you are teaching your brain to only get happiness while looking at porn, then when you're not looking at porn, you become unhappy. Like with everything else on this list, indulge with care and moderation.

3. Isolating yourself for days: more of a consequence of depression than a coping mechanism. But also one of those very dangerous and difficult hurdles to get over, because human beings are inherently, hard-wired to be social creatures. We survived cosmic disasters and ice-ages going back millions of years by forming tight-knit communities and banding together, so it's not an option - you need social exposure, even if it's in small amounts until you become more comfortable. Isolation increases your chances of deepening your depression and rumination cycles and making everything else worse. Get out and go around other people even if it's strangers, you will slowly start to rebuild those connective parts of your brain and be more comfortable with reaching out for help.

4. Gaming all day: just like porn, you are teaching your brain to only feel pleasure from one single kind of activity, and games are designed to give you these pleasure chemical boosts, so it's unexpectedly easy to get addicted to gaming. Moderate anything that makes you feel this way, take frequent breaks, walk around, change your mental environment. Take time to clean your living space and yourself or the problem will get worse and worse.

5. Getting really fucking high: Same song and dance as with games and porn, you are re-wiring your brain to cope with feelings of pain and pleasure through an outside source, making it much, much harder to deal with your feelings when you're not imbibing in the outside source. This is why they say that while cannabis isn't physically addictive, it can be psychologically addictive, like anything that can give you a pleasure/reward feedback. You can get addicted to pot, rock climbing or broccoli if they give you that mental reward, so moderate or quit or you will make your problem worse without the substance or escape tool.

6. Browsing reddit for hours: While this shares some of the same issues as other dopamine-hit escape tools, specifically to reddit - you have to understand that most of what goes on in reddit discussions is not real, it's full of either exaggerated takes that don't reflect what normal life is like, or it's wholey fabricated by bots for engagement and sensationalism. If you delve too deep into reddit, like any social media site, you will only end up arming your brain with stupid nonsense to ruminate on. Scrolling social media constantly is as bad for you health as doing drugs or porn, but strangely more socially acceptable.

7. Crying into a pillow: The best thing on this list. If you can find a way to get emotional release of pent up despair and can actually cry it out, you WILL feel better after, it's just chemistry again, everything is chemistry. Your brain will seek to comfort your despair, you will get that equilibrium again, you will feel a wash of pleasure/reward chemicals after a good cry. What you need to beware of is rumination though, you HAVE to manage your mental storytelling, because you can quickly get stuck in patterns of despair from having reoccuring ideas and thoughts that make your depressive episodes worse and last longer. Learn to identify when your brain starts to write stories to explain how you feel and you can nip depressive episodes before you lose days, weeks, months or years to cycles of rumination and depression.

8. Not eating: your body needs nutrients to function, even if you hate it, even if it hurts, even if you're sobbing while forcing scrambled eggs or mashed potatoes down your throat, you HAVE to eat or all your symptoms will get worse. Nobody is coming. Nobody will notice and start taking care of you. Nobody is going to feel sorry for you and notice how much pain you're in, you have to pick yourself up and start learning to care about yourself because nobody else is going to do it for you. Yes, it sucks and life is miserable, but when this passes and you start feeling good again, as normally happens, you WILL regret not taking better care of yourself when you were in pain. A healthier diet will also help add to the list of things that will help you feel better and have fewer episodes.